Tomatoes, corn, and peaches are the staples of New Jersey agriculture. But at Morris Gbolo’s farm in the state’s southern tip, crimson-hued amaranths and plump Liberian bitter ball are the prized crops… Gbolo is the first farmer to introduce his country’s bitter ball to New Jersey. The African eggplant (also known as garden egg or jilo) is especially prized by Liberians, whose numbers have been swelling in nearby Philadelphia… “Ethnic farms like Morris’s cater to recent immigrants who cannot find the fresh specialty produce [of] their homelands,” says Richard VanVranken, an agricultural agent at Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Atlantic County who has studied New Jersey’s ethnic food industry since the 1980s… VanVranken hired Gbolo to work in his extension program in 2006 and soon realized it was an opportunity to study African crops and learn from Gbolo, who had been a farmer and agriculture educator in Liberia.